"Dinner @ Greenness Hotpot, Banicao District Taipei
With the standard price for all you can eat hotpot in Taipei city starting at roughly $500 TWD ($16.50), sometimes it pays to venture out of the city into the surrounding Taipei County.
If you look hard enough, it’s often possible to score yourself an all-you-can-eat hotpot meal for well under $500.
As the current temperature in Taipei continues to hover around 10 degrees C, today I’ll share with you a recent dinner we had at Greenness Hotpot.
Situated in Banciao District, just south of Taipei City, Greenness Hotpot is quite large compared to Taipei City’s cosy hotpot places.
On offer a variety of hotpot flavours for you to pick from:
Personally I have a thing for curry flavoured hotpots so I ordered this and am happy to report the flavour was quite delicious. The girlfriend went with the spicy flavour and equally found it satisfying.
Being an all you can eat buffet, it’s up to you to get up and serve yourself and Greenness provide you with a huge selection to stuff yourself with.
At the far end you’ve got a refrigerated wall of meats and chilled foods,
and in the centre a series of heated mains for you to help yourself from, along with various steamed dumplings and soups.
If you’re craving sushi, Greenness have a manned sushi bar you can order from,
and I believe these guys will also cut up various types of hotpot meat on request if you’re not happy with the wall fridge offerings of meat.
Oh, and there’s plenty of options to choose from when it comes to mixing your sauce too!
For dessert there’s a cabinet of cakes and bread, and in the centre aisle you’ve got jellies and two fondue fountains (milk chocolate and white chocolate) to dip marshmellows and breadsticks in. Greenness also has a selection of Meiji icecream as well as several brands of individually wrapped icecreams to enjoy.
There’s also a well stocked drinks bar down one side offering a ton of drink choices and around the corner from that is a soft drink fridge serving delicious Coke, Fanta and Sprite in glass bottles!
After filling my plate up, I went back to our table and marvelled at the wonder that is all you can eat hotpot in Taiwan.
Sometimes the staff let the meat and more popular dishes run out at these large all you can eat hotpot places, but I’m happy to report this didn’t happen at Greenness. Stuff did run out but the staff were constantly refilling everything up.
Coming in at $379 TWD ($12.50 USD), Greenness Hotpot is definitely a viable cheaper alternative to Taipei City’s all you can eat hotpot joints. $121 TWD might not sound like much in savings but if you eat hotpot regularly it’s a noticeable difference over the long-term.
Greenness Hotpot is located on Section 1 of Wenhua Road in Banciao between Banciao and Xinpu MRT stations (blue line).
I’m not sure of the exact address (website URL is in Chinese) but if you’re heading from Banciao Station, Greenness is on the left side of Wenhua Road (it’s huge, just look for the giant fish logo).
January 5th, 2012 at 11:19 pm Jeff L.(Quote)
Haw. This place is 1-2 minutes from where I live! I went there once, the food was OK. Nothing to write home about.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:11 am yi(Quote)
too much greens and not enough meat on your plate oz.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:48 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
@Jeff
I’ve started to rate hotpot places on the quality of the soup. With most places offering the same food to put into the soup, I find the soup often makes or breaks the meal.
Greenness (apart from the sheer variety of food on offer) was pretty good in this regard.
@Yi
That was the first plate out of 3!
. Greens tend to be noticeably lacking in most food here so I make it a point to get more than my fair share of veggies everytime I’m at a hotpot place. I think of it like a weekly salad quota all stuffed into one meal.
January 6th, 2012 at 1:26 pm TaiwanTeacher(Quote)
It has never failed to amaze me that Hotpot has become such an important “restaurant” tradition in Taiwan. Why would anyone fork over $16 to cook dinner for himself?
I can do that at home for the minimal cost of a few foods from the market.
Does McDonald’s in Taiwan likewise ask you to come inside and cook a burger yourself, and then overcharge you for the privilege? Would any other true restaurant ask you to do so? Is this Hotpot thing some sort of “Rent-a-Kitchen” enterprise?
Sorry, i just don’t get it. An understanding of the whole concept evades me.
January 6th, 2012 at 3:39 pm yi(Quote)
i like hotpot because there is a little bit more interaction when i eat, think BBQ. also you can cook the way you like (i like my meat a bit on the rare side, but not everyone likes that). and besides, IT’S ALL YOU CAN EAT, WOOT!!!!!
January 6th, 2012 at 6:47 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
I don’t really count hotpot as cooking. I mean hey, if you can dump food into boiling water and retreive it a few minutes later you can enjoy hotpot. Plus like what Yi said, I do enjoy being able to control how long everything boils for to my taste.
Otherwise you might as well just end up drinking soup as it’d all get mushy (some people like that). In winter it’s good too as the soup warms you up nicely.
For me the enjoyment comes out of the sheer amount of food options available. Food is retardedly expensive here in Taiwan raw and a lot of rental places don’t have a kitchen.
I could go out and buy everything I wanted to cook for hotpot, but it’d cost a lot more than even $500 TWD. Meat alone is stupidly expensive retail.
Far better to let the hotpot places buy it wholesale (which I don’t have access to) and pay five beef noodles worth to enjoy the range available every now and then.
Back home McDonalds was pushing nearly $10 so all you can eat hotpot @ $16 is a steal.
January 8th, 2012 at 3:11 am TaiwanTeacher(Quote)
Ok. Factor in the “socializing” and a full belly, and I’ll agree that it can be fun. That’s fair enough. I just get tired of chatting with my 4-year-old daughter, being as how she’s the only one there that speaks English. Understand?
January 13th, 2012 at 8:16 am yi(Quote)
lol understood.